


Ace friend

by AuntyAgonee



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Ace Asexuality, BoO spoliers- skip through the first couple of paragraphs, Confused sexuality, Gen, Nico is a good bro, Post-Gaia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-11
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2018-03-11 21:05:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3332858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuntyAgonee/pseuds/AuntyAgonee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here goes.<br/>“I think I might be asexual.” says Jason.<br/>Nico pauses “You mean like an amoeba?”<br/>“No…that’s splitting yourself. I am not telling you I think I might be able to reproduce through binary fission.”<br/>Sex education from the 40s doesn’t make for much in 2017.</p><p>In which Jason struggles with his sexuality and Nico struggles with his comforting skills.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ace friend

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure where this particular head-canon came from, but when it took root it really took root and I was forced to churn out this one-shot.  
> Gods I wish that title were better. I can only apologise for that shit of a title.

It has been bothering Jason for a while.  
By a while, that means ever since Leo died, almost two years back. It wasn’t anything to do with Leo’s death, per se, but what Jason started to feel at that point as triggered in part by knowing that he was (probably) never going to see his best friend again, unless he found a convenient excuse to sneak into Elysium. Even when Leo came back (and scared the living shit out of everyone because he just showed up at the campfire about two months after his death, sans Calypso and an eye which Nemesis apparently claimed as a ‘tip’ for her services, and it was only Nico’s say that convinced the rest of the camp that it was Leo and not an identical zombie needing a head-shot), Jason still felt it. Granted, the urgency of the situation had dimmed somewhat.  
In fact, the whole thing was cast to the back of his mind for a long time. His friend was back from the dead- what else mattered?  
This did.  
He could only ignore it for so long. Eventually, when he started to pay attention to ‘it’ again, he realised he didn’t want to talk to Leo about it. He wanted Leo to be around when ‘it’ came into light because he knew Leo would say all the right things and make him feel not like the humongous freak he was beginning to be convinced he was.  
But it wasn’t Leo he wanted to talk to.  
That took another couple months of some serious pondering. Knowing Jason’s friends, they would all be totally cool about it. Thalia wouldn't give a fuck, Annabeth would offer to help him research the subject, Percy would grin and ask all kinds of questions he didn’t know were awkward, Frank would make such a huge effort not to stamp on Jason’s new beliefs he would end up double-thinking every single thing he said…yep. They’d all be good with it.  
Except for Piper, maybe, which was the main reason Jason let ‘it’ lie for so long.  
Well, he simply can’t ignore ‘it’ any longer. He needs to talk about ‘it’, now, honestly and without shame. Thank the gods he has just about figured out who he wants to confide in.

Jason doesn’t bother with knocking “Hey Nico? You home?”  
The front door swings open of its own volition, as it always does in the Hades cabin. The lights are out and the hall is dark, except for some light pooling underneath the door of the bedrooms. For some reason, Nico never turns the lights on. Jason suspects he has night-vision like an owl (how else do Hades’ demigods find their way around in the gloomy Underworld?), but he hasn’t asked yet, knowing it will embarrass Nico to admit.  
“Are you asleep?” he calls.  
“No.” comes the reply “Wish I was.”  
Figures he’d be awake. It’s barely 10 o’clock in the evening. Usually, Nico will start to drop off a couple of minutes after midnight, and only with the help of some sleeping pills and a supply of tech manuals he keeps in the night-stand to ‘bore myself to sleep’.  
Jason nudges the door open with his foot “Still doing your History essay?”  
The subject being Mussolini in Italy, Nico has had a tiny bit of trouble keeping his personal experiences and what the textbooks say separated. He sits through every lesson concerning the dictator with a deeper, darker scowl than his standard and mutters a steady stream of curses in Italian under his breath. Jason has learnt a whole lot more about the Italian vocabulary since the unit started than he has about dictators.  
“Yes. I’ll be doing this History essay through tomorrow as well.” he is hunched over his desk with only the desk-lamp on, a pile of papers and textbooks at his feet, and the trash in the corner is full of crumpled balls of paper "I am going to be doing this paper forever, because this essay does not want to be finished."  
“Dyslexia kicking your ass?” guesses Jason.  
“It’s more the fact that this topic wants me to re-live my early childhood trauma,” he pushes some of his copious black hair out of his eyes and it falls back into place a second later “Trim it down for the teacher’s grading pleasure.”  
Jason drops into an armchair and tries not to fidget “Yeah, I guess that sucks, doesn’t it? It’s kind of like writing a fanfiction about getting stuck in that jar.”  
Nico gives him an odd look “No it’s not. It’s like writing about growing up for a decade under the thumb of a dictator. Then again, there’s basically nothing I don’t remember without remembering some kind of tragedy.”  
Jason’s knee starts to twitch, despite his efforts to rein in his nerves “The jar. The giant dirt lady trying to squish everyone you loved-slash-hated-slash-knew. The years on the streets or in the labyrinth or wherever the heck you were. Having to learn how to fit in with society with a 40s education in morals-”  
“Jason.”  
“What?”  
“Spit it out.”  
He gives Jason one of those tired and grumpy looks he is so good at, making it clear he is not going to sit through whatever pedantic bullshit Jason has prepared to ease himself into the issue he’s here to discuss. Jason isn’t sure how Nico can see through him so fast. Piper, Reyna and Thalia can stay oblivious for much longer than he ever does. Maybe it’s the fact that they’re both guys? Guys who were raised in totally different ways (by now, Nico’s sixteen and Jason’s eighteenth birthday is just around the corner, but people in camp are still fond of saying that Jason has raised him), but they’re both still guys and have a better idea of how the other one operates for sharing the gender.  
Or maybe Nico can read minds now. Jason will readily believe either.  
Taking a deep breath, Jason considers how he should phrase what he is about to say “So you know how you like guys?”  
Nico is not impressed “Yeah. I know I like guys. There was a whole scandal about me liking guys a while back.”  
The mention of Eros and the appearance of those stupid cupid things around Valentine ’s Day still makes them both deeply uncomfortable and awkward, so that they can’t look at each other.  
“It was something you always knew, right?” his heart climbs steadily up his throat.  
Nico isn’t sure where this is going and it’s making him a little nervous “Always.”  
“So…so when you’re built kinda…different…or just, like, not straight, you just know it? How did you know it?”  
“Well…for a start I liked guys.”  
He isn’t being wilfully difficult. He is just miles out of his comfort zone. Talking about sexuality, or sex in general, is about as pleasant for Nico as it is for the average person to pass a kidney stone. If it were anyone else but Jason slouched in his reading chair, obviously scared out of their minds, he would have literally escaped via the window and left the patient to sort their own problems out.  
“No I mean how did you know you did?”  
He glances from side-to-side as if he suspects their conversation might have a hidden audience “Uh, it was just kinda written on my brain. I just knew.”  
“So…like when other guys started talking about girls, your mind would jump to guys?”  
“Yeah. Stuff like that. It was just something I knew about myself. Why are we talking about this?” he narrows his eyes “You’re not coming out to me, are you?”  
“Sorta. Not the way you came out though.”  
He blinks “Meaning?”  
Here goes.  
“I think I might be asexual.” says Jason.  
Nico pauses “You mean like an amoeba?”  
“No…that’s splitting yourself. I am not telling you I think I might be able to reproduce through binary fission.”  
Sex education from the 40s doesn’t make for much in 2017.  
Still, it’s a huge weight off Jason’s chest. Nico may be trying to work out what the fuck he means by this mysterious term, but it feels so gods-damned good to finally put ‘it’ to words that Jason doesn’t really care.  
“Hold on…hold on. You’re talking about that thing where you’re not physically attracted to other people, right?” he looks just a little bit proud of himself for distinguishing it from the mess of gender identities and sexualities the modern ages have to offer.  
Jason nods “I can appreciate when someone’s out of this world hot, but it’s like…I don’t really want to make use of them being hot.”  
So far, Nico isn’t giving the impression he wants to freak out and burn Jason at the stake. Instead, he seems more confused than anything.  
“Does Piper know?” he asks.  
His stomach tightens. Jason wraps an arm around his own waist, trying to coax the pain away. It is the beginnings of a fierce ache that tends to sneak up on him when he thinks about Piper in relation to what could have been their sex-life.  
He manages to speak through his nausea “She…she knows there’s something off. We’re both consenting adults by now and we’ve been together a long time…she’s not going to buy the ‘not rushing it’ excuse for much longer. But when she…she starts to talk about it or makes moves…I just start feeling sick, you know? Like somebody’s trying to take me out of my skin and put me in one that’s way too small.”  
Nico nods “Been there.”  
He appears to have chosen not to be fazed by the fact that Jason just flaunted the details of his would-be intimate life in his face.  
Jason scrapes a hand through his hair “You don’t think it’s weird, do you?”  
“No. Sisters and brothers together is weird. Nieces and uncles together is weird. Forcing a partner to do stuff is just downright wrong. I think we have a whole lot more to worry about in this world than whether or not you feel comfortable with having sex. It’s not going to bring the whole system shivering to its knees, is it?”  
For some reason, Jason wants to say ‘yes’.  
That has been his mind-frame for some time. Try as he might to dodge the social conventions and gender roles (which already lose a lot of their meanings when you’ve grown up in a camp full of half-gods), he just can’t escape the feeling that he has somehow failed as a man for having an amazingly hot girlfriend for an extended period of time and to have not done a single thing with her more intimate than a good kiss.  
He relates this sentiment to Nico, who shrugs again.  
“You have a sword. You have a serious tattoo. You fight monsters for a living. I don’t know how much more macho you can get before you explode, Jase, I wouldn’t worry about it.”  
Jason begins to calm down a little bit. It’s encouraging, this. Dude from the Forties who can’t even look at a female underwear model on a poster without offending some deeply-ingrained modesty, and he’s not batting an eye as his jock of a best friend admits he has never had a single sexual urge in his life.  
He clears his throat awkwardly “The only real issue is what you’re going to tell Piper. What does she think about your…shyness?”  
“For a week there she thought I was cheating on her with (Percy) somebody, but that was just one of those random paranoid moments people get when they’re scared a relationship isn’t going the right way. Apart from that…I guess she thinks it’s some kind of war trauma. Flashbacks shrinking me.” the ache is picking up steam, now.  
Nico pushes away from his desk “Didn’t need to hear that.” he goes to the window and pulls it open, allowing a cool breeze into the room “You know she loves you.”  
“Yeah. I know that. She doesn’t want to break up, she wants to get to the root of the problem.”  
“Which isn’t so much a problem as it is a sexuality.” adds Nico.  
Jason lets his gaze wander outside the window. He’s not too concerned about anyone eaves-dropping on them because no one ever goes up to the Hades cabin, especially not at night, unless they’re one of the crew of the Argo II (the ‘A-team’, as they’re sometimes called by idiots). Jason wouldn’t necessarily mind if someone else (barring Piper) found out about this.  
The lights are on in next door, where Percy lives. Percy is probably cleaning his sword or drowsing in front of a movie at this hour. Opposite his cabin is the Hephaestus kids: the chimneys will belch smoke and the machinery will throb quietly well on into the night. Leo might be napping on his workbench right now, but he won’t be in bed for at least another two hours.  
Piper is two cabins down from him. As usual, the lights are already winking off over there. Piper says her siblings belief in beauty-sleep is both unshakable and terrifying, so she doesn’t fight it. She will be propped up on a couple of books on her bed, working through a French translation of one of her favourite books. Jason has fallen asleep on her shoulder that way plenty of times.  
His gut is absolutely throbbing “I was thinking about giving her my permission to partake.”  
“Partake?”  
“In others.”  
“Oh. Uh, ok.”  
Jason shrugs helplessly “She’ll get no satisfaction from me. Might as well give her roaming rights. She might get sick of me and find somebody who’s not afraid of their dick, but…I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right. Sex makes me want to jump out of my skin and run away, but it is her thing, so I don’t really have a right to ask her to repress that part of herself because I’m not comfortable with it.”  
“Sure you do.”  
Jason gives him a frank look “How come?”  
He shrugs “If she really loves you she can deal with this.”  
Jason’s skin prickles, as if her accusing eyes were already on him “I know she’s tough, but stabbing Titans in the face and dealing with relationships are different things. I don’t want to lose her.”  
Indeed, the thought of losing Piper over this has panicked him so badly in the past he has tried to convince himself he does want to have sex with her- a conviction which was always nipped in the bud by stubborn reality.  
“You won’t,” Nico has no idea how to comfort people, but bless his dusty little heart, he is trying “You guys are good together.”  
Jason’s lets his gaze fall to the floor “I used to think we’d never break up. I’m not so sure now. I’m not sure this weirdness is worth losing her.”  
“Don’t say that. It’s not weird, ok? It’s just the way you’re built.”  
Jason can’t help but smile “Is that what you really think?”  
Nico nods “I might still be adjusting to the idea that I can have a boyfriend without being put to death, in this country anyway, but I know there’s nothing abnormal about being something other than straight.”  
“So you’re totally here for me?” grins Jason, unable to resist pushing his luck. The ache has even begun to ease off somewhat.  
Nico rolls his eyes “Do you need to ask?”  
And that’s enough for Jason, at the moment. Whatever happens to him and Piper, at least he’ll have an ace friend to help him muddle through.

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm assuming they are both headed towards the university in Camp Jupiter. Nico probably got skipped ahead a couple of years. I mean, c'mon, his tutors could be anyone from zombie Socrates to zombie Einstein, how are we going to stop the guy from skipping ahead?


End file.
